14 May 2014

I like drawings that make me laugh. When I inherited a traditional Blue Willow-pattern plate, I just had to redraw it and add a dinosaur. As I drew more plates and added more calamities—UFOs, Sasquatch, and volcanoes—folks urged me to produce real dinner plates. A Kickstarter project was born.

The first two Kickstarter projects went well (flying monkeys and giant robot), so here is the third project in what might turn out to be a long series. This design includes a hungry sea monster who appears to have escaped from the wild areas of an early Renaissance map.Imagine finding that bad boy behind your fish sticks!

This is part of White's Echo Company series, and while it looks like 'Tis the Season also features Lieutenant Rebecca Phillips, The Road Home seems like it's more up my alley, as it's about her return back to the United States from Vietnam, and about the post-war healing process. I have to say, though, while I'm not usually drawn to war stories, I've been meaning to read the Echo Company books for ages: Ellen Emerson White is a treasure.

A seventeen-year-old girl with precognitive powers—she sees the impending deaths of loved ones, but no one believes her, making her a WWI-era Cassandra—joins a volunteer nursing corps and heads off to France in an attempt to save the life of her one remaining brother. Love Sedgwick, so I'm a little bit horrified that I haven't gotten around to this one yet.

08 May 2014

A New Hampshire resident was handcuffed and led out of a school board meeting on May 5 after he protested the fact that his ninth-grade daughter was assigned the novel “Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult.

According to police, Gilford father William Baer “spoke out of order,” said Lt. James Leach. “Someone else was given the floor and was speaking. He interrupted them and continued after being asked to stop. He was then asked to leave and refused to leave unless he was arrested, so he was arrested.”

Considering the amount of press he's getting out of this, that he was told he'd be arrested if he didn't stop disrupting the meeting, and that he TOLD THE ARRESTING OFFICER TO ARREST HIM, it sounds to me like getting arrested is EXACTLY what he wanted. So the shock/horror/dismay he has been exhibiting in interviews comes off as a tad disingenuous.

"It was basically, you make a statement, say what you want and sit down," he said. "Sit down and shut up, basically, and that's not how you interact with adults."

Baer said he believes what happened at the meeting was a violation of his First Amendment rights. The board said it imposed the two-minute rule to give everyone a chance to be heard, but Baer refused to stop when his time was up.

Enforcing the rules of order at a public meeting? Is not a violation of someone's First Amendment rights. I suspect that if he'd been in the audience, listening to someone go on and on and on—especially if it was someone he disagreed with—that he'd have been ALL ABOUT enforcing the rules of order.

The school department sent WBZ a statement explaining it has revised its policy for letting parents know about books being read. “The district will take immediate action to revise these policies to include notification that requires parents to accept controversial material rather than opt out. Furthermore, the notification will detail more specifically the controversial material,” wrote Sue Allen, Chair of the Gilford School Board.

2. I've read the passage in question—according to WMUR, it's on page 313—and while it showcases the words "erection", "pumping", and "semen", it doesn't come close to reading like "...the transcript for a triple-X-rated movie". IN FACT—and keep in mind that as I haven't read the book, I read it out of context—it reads as pretty damn rapey to me. At the VERY LEAST, while it is certainly a depiction of sex, it doesn't come close to being titillating.

All of that is beside the point, though, as judging a 455-page book on less than a page of text isn't helpful, reasonable, or intellectually honest.